Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my religion when I was growing up. I had all the toys, the video cassettes, and dressed up for them for halloween! I didn’t have any of the video games, but traded with my friends – which is how I first came across the Game Boy iteration of the turtles! It has been well over 20 years since I last played TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan, so I’m gonna see if it still holds up to when I was a kid!

In terms of the story, its as basic as it gets. April has been kidnapped (again) by Shredder and friends, and you must battle him to get her back! The story is about as complex as a TV episode – it creates a fun scenario for the game to take place in!

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In terms of the gameplay, this is a 2D platforming game where you take control the turtles, running and jumping through levels with the A button, and using your weapons to destroy enemies with the B button. Similar to the first NES TMNT game, you don’t have lives, but instead have all four turtles, and if you loose, one of your turtles gets captured. If all four turtles are captured, the game is over!

The gameplay is still fun, but there are some that I noticed issues – for instance, I wasn’t really able to tell a difference between the turtles! Yes the weapons are different, but it doesn’t really change hit detection (unlike the first NES game). I also found the game a bit slow and very reactionary. The characters are big on the screen which leaves little time and space to see the enemies after appearing on screen.

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There are five levels in total – taking place in locations such as city streets, sewers, and even the Technodrome! Each stage is generally broken into a couple different stages and ends with a boss. The game also gives you the opportunity to select which stage you want to start at – but be warned – if you don’t start on the first level you don’t get the full ending! As the game is only 5 stages however, it can be completed quite quickly and actually feels a bit short.

The bosses themselves are very predictable in that you will find all the classic baddies here – Bebop, Rocksteady, Shredder, and even Krang! The first couple bosses are fairly straight forward (see the below video at the end for an example) but later bosses get a lot more challenging because they became so fast and attack so much. None of them were really fun to battle, but they nevertheless did they job as end-stage bosses.

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In terms of graphics, the game looks pretty good for a Game Boy game. There are lots of environments and many of them have many background effects that give the levels some depth (as seen above). The turtles look big on the screen and all the bad guys look how you would expect an 8-bit version of them would look. I just didn’t like how the turtles looked so similar to one another – apart from the changes in their weapon appearance. The music and sound effects were nothing fancy but were consistant throughout the game and accomplished what it needed to do.

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In summary, TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan is a short 2D action game for the Game Boy that is borderline fun that has some decent graphics and sound. The gameplay is a bit slow and it is very short, but it is still cheap so if this sounds like your type of game, picked it up! I give this game a final score of 6/10.

Final Score: 6/10